Podcast appearances and mentions of eleanor wachtel

This week on Bookends, we revisit Eleanor Wachtel's conversation with Samantha Harvey, the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. They spoke on Writers & Company in 2015 about Samantha's novel Dear Thief, which was inspired by a Leonard Cohen song. Samantha also explores her interest in themes of aging, why she writes about the unfamiliar, and infusing her work with philosophical questions.

For the conclusion of Writers and Company, the tables are turned and author Madeleine Thien interviews Eleanor Wachtel. Recorded at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal last spring, Thien speaks with Eleanor about her early life in Montreal, memorable moments from her career and more. They also look back on Eleanor's conversations with Antiguan American novelist and memoirist Jamaica Kincaid and British neurologist Oliver Sacks. Plus, Jeopardy! superchamp Mattea Roach joins Eleanor to talk about hosting CBC's new author interview show, Bookends.The entire Writers and Company archive will gradually be made available on the Simon Fraser University Library's Digitized Collections website. You can find it here: https://digital.lib.sfu.ca/writersandcompany-collection/writers-company

The Scottish author reflects on the stories she grew up with, the influence of feminism and how time moves in circular patterns. Ali Smith has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. Her 2014 novel How to Be Both won the Women's Prize for fiction and the Costa Book Award for novel. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 about the first two books in her Seasonal Quartet series, Autumn and Winter.

The American architect, known for challenging the idea of form, reflects on his life and the experiences that shape his work, from his days as a lieutenant in the Korean War to his time studying in Europe. He founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and is the author of several books on architecture and design, including Lateness. Peter Eisenman spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2011.

The American novelist draws on her experience growing up in an interracial family in her edgy, prize-winning fiction. Raised with an acute black consciousness, during a time when "'mixed' wasn't an option; you were either black or white," Senna brings an awareness — and astute analysis — of class, race and identity to all her writing. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 about her novel New People and her memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History.

Born during the Depression in Lockport, New York, Joyce Carol Oates started writing as a teen and has since written more than one hundred books, many of them portraying the darkness of American society. Her writing has earned her virtually every major American literary prize, as well as Montreal's Blue Metropolis Grand Prix in 2012. After accepting that prize, she joined Eleanor Wachtel on stage to talk about her life, her work and her latest novel, Mudwoman.

The Indian journalist and novelist writes stories that are autobiographical and revealing. Kumar joined Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 to talk about his book Immigrant, Montana - a mix of fiction, memory, politics and the pursuit of romance. Kumar's new novel is called My Beloved Life.

Even though Edna O'Brien left Ireland more than 50 years ago, the texture and atmosphere of the country continue to permeate her work. Her first seven books were banned or suppressed in Ireland. In fact her debut novel, The Country Girls, was burned in her home parish for depicting the ambitions and sexual desires of young women. Today, O'Brien is celebrated as one of Ireland's greatest living writers.In this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2009, Edna O'Brien talks about her scandalous early success, her mother's enduring influence, and her portrait of Romantic poet Lord Byron, the world's first global celebrity. 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of Byron's death, when he was just 36 years old.

In 2018, Eleanor Wachtel went to New York City to interview one of North America's most renowned and daring creative pioneers, Laurie Anderson. The multimedia artist and musician had just published her retrospective book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which destroyed Anderson's archive of work and memorabilia. In this career-spanning and deeply personal conversation, she talks about the connection between story and memory, growing up in the Midwest with seven brothers and sisters, her relationship with Lou Reed, her partner of 21 years, and becoming unlikely pen pals with John F. Kennedy.

This week, for Pride season, the Oscar-nominated playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. Known most recently for his movie collaborations with Steven Spielberg, including Lincoln, Westside Story and The Fablemans, Kushner's breakout hit was his epic play Angels in America, the winner of multiple Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, among many other awards. Fuelled by the AIDS crisis and Reaganism in the 1980s, the play was made into an opera and an HBO miniseries starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino and Emma Thompson. In this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2011, Kushner also talks about his later work, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, a family drama that evokes George Bernard Shaw and Mary Baker Eddy.

In honour of the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Eleanor Wachtel revisits her 2005 conversation with one of his biographers, Nicholas Murray.

Germany's Jenny Erpenbeck is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024 for her novel Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel, who chaired the International Booker Prize jury, in 2015 about The End of Days, an imaginative story that spans the 20th century through the eyes of a character who lives multiple versions of her life. Erpenbeck also reflects on her own childhood, growing up in a literary family in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall, and the ways in which history, politics and her experience with personal and national transformations have inspired her work.

The British born author moved to New York in 2008 to write a book set in sixteenth-century India. But he was drawn to write about America, focusing on life in the city and the Mojave Desert in his two novels White Tears and Gods Without Men. Hari Kunzru spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2017 from New York

Jackie Kay's adoption as a baby, and investigation into her birth parents — a Nigerian father and Scottish mother — give her an original take on Scotland and cultural identity. Jackie Kay talked about her uncomfortable discoveries upon meeting her birth parents, as well as her two books, Wish I Was Here and Darling: New and Selected Poems, when she met with Eleanor Wachtel at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh in 2007.

In 2004, just before she won the Scotiabank Giller Prize (for the second time) for her story collection, Runaway, Alice Munro met Eleanor Wachtel at a restaurant near the author's home to discuss her new book, her interest in writing about infidelity and sex and her life growing up in Wingham, Ontario. The acclaimed Canadian short story writer, and Canada's first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, died on May 13, 2024.

Paul Auster spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his novel Oracle Night, the ways in which reality and fiction blend and how coincidences shape our lives at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal in 2004. The writer of The New York Trilogy, Leviathan and 4 3 2 1, among many other books, was best known for his postmodernist fiction and meta-narratives. He died on April 30, 2024. He was 77. 

From his childhood in San Francisco's sand dunes to sitting in French cafes with Philip Glass and Samuel Beckett, Richard Serra reflects on his life and work during a 2011 conversation with Eleanor Wachtel. Best known for his evocative and monumental steel structures, you can find Serra's sculptural works all over the world, including his piece Titled Spheres in Toronto Pearson Airport. Serra died in March. He was 85.

This week on Writers and Company, British poet Raymond Antrobus. Antrobus spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2019 about his collection, The Perseverance, which explores his complicated relationship with his late father and growing up deaf. 

This week on Writers and Company, Anita Desai — one of India's most celebrated and successful writers. Over the course of her career, which spans five decades, Desai has written several novels and has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to her on stage at Montreal's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in 2017, where she received the Grand Prix for lifetime achievement. Desai's latest book, Rosarita, is forthcoming from Picador Press. This interview originally aired May 7, 2017.

This week, two conversations with the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir The Return. In 2011, Libyan British author Hisham Matar spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his childhood living under Gadhafi's dictatorship and the search for his father, a political dissident who was imprisoned. Then, from 2020, Matar reflects on his memoir The Return and his book A Month in Siena, which explores the relationship between history, art and grief. Please note: this episode contains difficult subject matter.

This week on Writers and Company from the Archives, Irish authors Michael Collins, Claire Keegan, Colum McCann and Nuala O'Faolain. They spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2003 onstage at the Victoria Literary Arts Festival.

It's a big week in the literary calendar (if we do say so, ourselves), as we've just announced this year's International Booker Prize longlist. To mark the occasion, James is joined by Fiammetta Rocco, the administrator of the International Booker Prize, and Eleanor Wachtel, chair of the 2024 judging panel. Listen in as they discuss the prize, this year's longlisted books and why translated fiction matters. Conversation topics in this episode: Fiammetta shares how the International Booker Prize began, and how it works in tandem with the Booker Prize The importance of translators The surging popularity of translated fiction, especially amongst younger readers What it's like to be a judge for the International Booker Prize Common themes in contemporary literature across the world The 2024 longlist Reading list: Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/not-a-river Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/simpatia Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/kairos The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/the-details White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/white-nights Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/mater-2-10 A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/a-dictator-calls The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/the-silver-bone What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/what-id-rather-not-think-about Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated by Leah Janeczko: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/lost-on-me The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/the-house-on-via-gemito Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/crooked-plow Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Julia Sanches: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/undiscovered A full transcript of the episode is available at our website. Follow The Booker Prize Podcast so you never miss an episode. Visit http://thebookerprizes.com/podcast to find out more about us, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok @thebookerprizes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American novelist and short story writer talked to Eleanor Wachtel about growing up in Mississippi and her novel, Pew, which follows a mysterious stranger who makes a big impact on a small town in the American South. This interview originally aired February 28, 2021.

This week, two conversations with Martin Amis, one of England's most engaged and provocative writers. In 2014, Amis spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about his novel The Zone of Interest, which focuses on the Holocaust from a different angle. Its screen adaptation is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. Followed by a conversation from 2019 about the Italian Jewish chemist, Holocaust survivor and writer, Primo Levi — whose work greatly inspired Amis's writing — featuring Levi's biographer Ian Thomson. Please note: this episode contains difficult subject matter and discussion of suicide.

American novelist and musician James McBride is best known for his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water – about his immigrant Jewish mother and Black American father. In 2013, McBride won the National Book Award for his novel The Good Lord Bird - an irreverent portrayal of abolitionist John Brown. Eleanor Wachtel's conversation with James McBride about these two books, and his life, first aired in 2014.

This week on Writers & Company from the Archives, Canadian poet, essayist, Greek and Latin scholar and librettist, Anne Carson. The author of Autobiography of Red and its sequel Red Doc> is also the first and only two-time winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2011 about her book Nox — an elegy to her brother and a moving reflection on absence 

Looking back on Philip Roth, one of the most celebrated American writers, who died in 2018, aged 85. From Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint to The Plot Against America — Roth's legacy lives on. He spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about his early success, coping with fame and controversy, and the evolution of his writing... and his life.

The celebrated Congolese-French writer joined Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Vancouver Writers Festival in 2016. Mabanckou's recent books are charming explorations of childhood, family and country. His memoir The Lights of Pointe-Noire relates his experience of returning to his hometown after 23 years, while his novel Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty captures his childhood spirit in the character of his 10-year-old alter ego.

This week on Writers & Company from the archives, celebrating a classic that's also one of the most translated books in the world: Le Petit Prince or The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Biographer Stacy Schiff, filmmaker Mark Osborne and novelist Éric Dupont joined Eleanor Wachtel for the book's 75th anniversary in 2018 to reflect on its enduring appeal.

Best known for her Cazalet Chronicles and a dozen other books, English novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard turned to her own life in her memoir, Slipstream. In the book, and in this conversation with Eleanor Wachtel from 2003, she reflects on her difficult upbringing in London in the 1920s and '30s, on her first marriage during the Second World War, and shares her account of her widely discussed breakup with renowned writer Kingsley Amis. Howard died 10 years ago, aged 90.

Australia's most celebrated Indigenous author Alexis Wright spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2009 about her award-winning novel Carpentaria. Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her new novel, Praiseworthy, will be published in Canada in February.

This week, to strike a celebratory note, an encore presentation of Writers & Company's 20th anniversary special with acclaimed writers Dionne Brand, Margaret Drabble, Deborah Eisenberg and Andrew O'Hagan. They joined host Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2010. *This interview originally aired Oct. 31, 2010.

Winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, Irish poet Seamus Heaney died ten years ago when he was 74. Known for poems that engage with the immediacy of the natural world and its physicality, Heaney spoke to Eleanor Wachtel in 2010 about his book Human Chain. It won UK's £10,000 Forward Prize, among Heaney's many other honours. *This interview originally aired May 23, 2010.

Lydia Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction." Her 2007 short story collection, Varieties of Disturbance, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Davis's newest title, Our Strangers, contains 144 short stories in 300 pages. Lydia Davis spoke to Eleanor Wachtel on stage at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. *This interview originally aired June 10, 2007.

In honour of novelist and critic A.S. Byatt, who died on November 16, Writers & Company revisits her 2009 interview with Eleanor Wachtel, recorded live at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Byatt was there to launch her novel, The Children's Book, and to receive the festival's $10,000 Grand Prix. *Please note this interview includes reference to suicide. It originally aired on May 24, 2009.

In 2019, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to German-American graphic artist Nora Krug about her award-winning illustrated memoir, Belonging. It's a powerful and compassionate investigation into Krug's family's involvement in the Second World War and the impact of history on successive generations. Her new book, Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, is a real-time, personal record from a Ukrainian journalist and an anti-war Russian artist, which Krug solicited and then illustrated. *This interview deals with difficult subjects including the Holocaust and antisemitism. It originally aired on March 10, 2019.

WARNING: This discussion deals with suicide. In late 1994, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to award-winning author and Vietnam War veteran Tim O'Brien. He's the author of such acclaimed books as Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods. O'Brien new novel – his first in 20 years – is called America Fantastica. *This interview originally aired on Jan. 15, 1995.

Acclaimed Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has dedicated her life to telling the stories of Indigenous peoples. She's made more than 50 films with the National Film Board of Canada, including the landmark documentaries Christmas at Moose Factory, Incident at Restigouche and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, and has been called "the most important filmmaker in the history of Canada." In 2008, Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Obomsawin at her home in Montreal.

The former laureate for Irish fiction, Sebastian Barry writes richly invented stories inspired by people in his own family – from his grandfather in the 2014 novel, The Temporary Gentleman, to Days Without End about his grandfather's uncle. His latest novel, Old God's Time, is on the longlist for this year's Booker Prize. Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to Barry many times over the years, starting in 2008 with his novel The Secret Scripture, about a 100-year-old woman forcibly confined to a psychiatric hospital. *This episode originally aired Oct. 19, 2008.

Agnieszka Holland is perhaps best known for her films Europa Europa, Angry Harvest and In Darkness, as well as adaptations of The Secret Garden and Washington Square. Her latest film, Green Border, about the Syrian refugee crisis along Poland's border with Belarus, is having its North American premiere at TIFF. In 2013, she spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about her three-part series, Burning Bush, set during the Prague Spring. *This episode originally aired Dec. 17, 2013.

Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to the popular and critically acclaimed English writer Zadie Smith many times over the years, including in 2010 about her first non-fiction collection, Changing My Mind. It features essays about writers such as Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov and George Eliot and touches on everything from the craft of writing to Smith's love of films, as well as personal reflections about her family. *This episode originally aired on February 28, 2010.

Known for his bestselling case studies The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings and An Anthropologist on Mars, British author and neurologist Oliver Sacks was one of a kind. Infused with enthusiasm and compassion, his writing explored the depths of human consciousness. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Sacks in 2001 about his book, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. He died in 2015. He was 82 years old.

When Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, the Swedish Academy praised her for giving "life to an essential aspect of American reality," in novels "characterized by visionary force and poetic import." In this 2012 conversation, Morrison speaks with Eleanor Wachtel about her novels Home and A Mercy, as well as growing up in Ohio and the death of her son, Slade. Toni Morrison died in 2019. She was 88.

One of the premier American poets of his generation, Mark Strand used precise, everyday language, humour and surreal imagery to describe the quiet anguish of life. A former poet laureate of the U.S., he won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection, Blizzard of One. In 1999, Mark Strand spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about summers spent in Nova Scotia, engaging with art and the language of love. He died in 2014. He was 80 years old.

Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to the award-winning English writer Julian Barnes many times over the course of his lengthy career. In June 2016, he joined her onstage at the Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library to talk about his love of music, his novel The Noise of Time, about the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and dealing with death. *Please note this episode contains some discussion of suicide.

In a special conversation recorded in Toronto in 2002, Eleanor Wachtel spoke with Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell, founders of Caedmon Records, a pioneer in commercial spoken word recordings. You'll hear the voices of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and more.

Celebrated Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat speaks to Eleanor Wachtel about her moving memoir, Brother, I'm Dying. It tells the story of Danticat's family amid turbulent times, focusing on her father and his brother, the uncle who raised her in Haiti and later died in custody as he sought refuge in Miami. *This episode originally aired October 21, 2007.

In a rare joint conversation recorded onstage in Montreal in 2001, popular novelist Margaret Drabble and her husband, the influential biographer Michael Holroyd, spoke to Eleanor Wachtel about their once-secret marriage, and exploring their parents' stories through works of fiction and memoir.

Remembering the popular and provocative English writer, Martin Amis, who died in May 2023 at the age of 73. Son of acclaimed author Sir Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis is perhaps best known for his novels Money, London Fields and The Information. You'll also hear part of Eleanor Wachtel's 1992 interview with Kingsley Amis, recorded at his home in London. This episode originally aired in 2007.

For Writers & Company's final original episode, Eleanor Wachtel is interviewed on-stage by Matt Galloway, host of CBC Radio's The Current. She then speaks with American authors Brandon Taylor and Gary Shteyngart, and receives surprise greetings from the likes of Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith.